The Yiddish Book Center's

Wexler Oral History Project

A growing collection of in-depth interviews with people of all ages and backgrounds, whose stories about the legacy and changing nature of Yiddish language and culture offer a rich and complex chronicle of Jewish identity.

Sneaking Across Ever-Changing Borders in Lithuania/Poland/Czarist Russia

Watch now:

Fira Bramson, z"l, - former bibliographer of the Judaica collection of the Lithuanian National Archives - tells how her parents found themselves in Vilna when the city came under Polish control, and how they snuck across the border to Lithuanian Kovno (Kaunas).

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Fira Bramson.

This excerpt is in Yiddish.

Fira Bramson was born in Kovne (Kaunas), Lithuania in 1924. Fira died in 2016.

Jump to map

This interview is part of the Yiddish in the Academy: scholars, language instructors, and students series.

Other video highlights from this oral history

New York or Lithuania?: Where Do Vilna's Yiddish Treasures Belong?

7 min 5 sec

Escaping Kovne (Kovno or Kaunus, Lithuania) During World War Two

6 min 22 sec

"I Said I Would Write a Book on the Condition that It Be in Two Languages": A Bilingual Lithuanian-Yiddish Memoir

6 min 39 sec

"I Work for the Yiddish Culture": Fira Bramson Reflects on Her Work with the Judaica Collection of the Lithuanian National Archives

5 min 16 sec

Once in a Lifetime: Translating from Yiddish to Lithuanian for the Communist Government

3 min 2 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

Themes: